HAPPY GARDEN – HAPPY GARDEN (RETARD RECORDS)

HAPPY GARDEN – HAPPY GARDEN (RETARD RECORDS)

Happy Garden is a project from the mysterious circle that appears to revolve around the destruction of Doomsday Apocalypse Special.  And as you would expect it is quite the piece of work.

Unsurprisingly the results are demented.  Rather than songs these tracks serve as minor soundscapes exhibiting slender moments of music doodling wrapped up in a wide variety of found sounds and samples.

So the story goes, Mo Rose Lard the sole member of the act previously served brief spells playing in “various illustrious bands” such as Methylated Spirits, The Missing Gender, Da Sheep, Pretentious Death, Des Pulls Tombent Du Ciel and Daishonin before finally deciding to try her hand at solo project and thus Happy Garden was born.

And there’s nothing happy about this garden.  The five tracks on offer here are a veritable nightmare, the residue and fallout of a disturbed mind.  Quite frankly the cover says it all with a scrappily reproduced photo of a crazily decorated doll resembling Regan MacNeil while reminding of the artwork by Cindy Sherman on the covers of Fontanelle and Painkillers by Babes In Toyland.

The opening track “Ramona” serves as a misleading warning.  Clocking in at a mere 38 seconds it serves as some kind of pleasant theme music to run over the top of invisible credits.  And then the horror begins.

All in all this serves as what appears to workings of a disturbed mind.  As “Jiang-Xin-Bin-Xin” rolls with the entry “still hungry?  Ready for something that screams?” and a Hellraiser sample it lives up to its billing of judging another person’s feelings by one’s own.  With a weird pulse it divulges various gestures and playful samples including the juxtaposition of a giggling baby next to a horror movie declaration of “I am pain” all before ending on Andie MacDowell’s nasty dig at Gerard Depardieu in Green Card to the point that it is rendered almost unrecognisable.  And packed into barely one minute and thirty seconds.

Resuming the frailty “Teatime Lovebite” enters with a marching mantra and the declaration “it was a nightmare” as all gets twisting in notes and further samples swoop in from various directions/dimensions circling an annoying keyboard chime.  This time the track does not make it to the one minute and thirty second mark.

The weird samples continue as “Bisela!” begins with the “Froggy love Daddy” declaration from Blazing Saddles as a harp track drives proceedings while various samples cascade across the track and a synth arrives playing spaghetti western music in an updated style.  Then with that a subtle Rocky Horror Picture Show sample asks “I would like, if I may, to take you on a strange journey” before the track closes on a Foghorn Leghorn quote stating “nice girl but about as sharp as a bag of wet mice”.  Surely Happy Garden is not referring to herself?

With that and less than six minutes on the clock the disco comes to a close with “En Tren” and a sweet organ intro that soon becomes sinister with gunfire and then the field recording of a journey on public transport, which the title suggests is by train.  The track runs at eight minutes long as weird voices appear in motion and all is engulfed in some atmospheric Twin Peaks style of scoring.  And then suddenly as the music accompaniment exits at the three minute you realise that you are now just listening to the poorly taped surroundings of existence and voices from the past that may now be ghosts.  Its haunting.

Happy Garden is neither happy or a garden.  These are the works of a healthy pasture.  You can’t dance to this, you can’t fuck to this but you can think to this.  One out of three ain’t bad.

Thesaurus moment: sore.

Happy Garden

Retard Records